Case Study

Digital Product and Online Sales

Domain Digital Product and Online Sales
Name of the Case: Driving online sales through DigEca E-Commerce portal, a first-of-its kind truly
inclusive omnichannel e-commerce portal for SMEs in the industry.
Introduction
DigEca was launched in June 2018 with the initial name “Emerge”. This first-of-its-kind platform was
proposed to digitize the demand servicing of ECA (Emerging Corporate Accounts or SMEs).
DigEca aims to capture the user requirements electronically to provide better transparency, analysis on lost
sales (via sales funnel conversion) and increasing sales of Value-added products. DigEca mainly captures the
sales funnel (Enquiry, Purchase Orders and Invoicing). The portal also provides insights on order tracking and
indent planning for increasing transparency in order management. Integration with SAP and Tally provides
invoicing to be done directly.

Background
With tremendous adoption of ~2.5 Lakh tonnes of first hand monthly enquiry capture, from channel partners
during the second year of its launch, DigEca was rolled out to the end ECA customers in Oct ’19 as a pilot
with already 100% adoption from channel partners. The vision was to connect to our end-customers, whose
requirements were previously captured only via our channel partners. This have helped to provide a picture
of pan-India requirement and help plan better for our channel partners resulting in lesser yield losses.
Any requirement for new product development can also be planned based on the enquiry logging from our
customers based on market demands. Extensive dashboards provide better decision making for our
customers as well as Tata Steel. We have a built-in predictive analysis and help users plan better. Interesting
services such as customer engagement activities and training to shop floor can also be planned via this portal.

Problem Statement/Challenges Faced

DigEca, was meant for the end customers to come and directly place enquiries on the platform and negotiate
with their channel partners online and complete. As per roll-out plan, DigEca was first rolled out to the
channel partners, and then to the end customers.
DigEca has successfully onboarded almost 12% of ECAs till date and aims to have them all onboarded. Since
DigEca 2.0 (e-commerce portal) shall be open to customers for any ECA to come and sign up themselves and
start using the portal, customers are more comfortable using current medium or offline mode of purchase.
Users are demanding huge benefits from the platform although product has been made to design as per
end-user convenience.
Pilot for rolling out to customers was started in FY20 to collect customer feedback and incorporate it into
system design and features. Since DigEca is an all-inclusive omnichannel platform having stakeholders from
Tata Steel, channel partner teams and end customers, all features are not likely to benefit all stake holders
equally.

Critical Case Questions

ECA business has a very established offline channel for a long time which is taken care of by channel
managers across brands and sales managers Pan-India. The idea is to inculcate change management across
channels and have a shift from offline to online with more digital benefits. End state of ~50% ECA business
to be online through DigEca with >90% ECAs onboarded and starting to use this platform.
Solution should have a detailed analysis on inherent challenges and what should be done to curb them.
Expectations on how more relevant features can be incorporated in system design to bring more buy-in
among users (SMEs and channel partners separately), thereby developing effective customer base.